


Expendable Personnel

by Tammany



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Expendable, Gen, Unresolved death-ish situation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-16
Updated: 2014-08-16
Packaged: 2018-02-13 09:32:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2145732
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tammany/pseuds/Tammany
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I feel for Lestrade, as currently set up. He appears to give and love and offer such loyalty--and, yet, his role as currently laid out isn't even sloppy seconds. He's third place, at best, for everyone we have actually been shown.</p><p>This is maudlin, but it was quick and I could tuck it in before Sunday, which is likely to be the first day I can really write much. So--fast and intentionally a bit ambiguous and mawkish.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Expendable Personnel

“I’ll kill them all,” the banty little madman with the automatic weapon said, grinning a lunatic smile that was all tooth and spittle. “I’ll kill them.”

Lestrade shook his head. “Not happening. You have to go through me, first.”

The madman raised the automatic. “What fun. I think I’ll take you up on the invitation.”

Below, at the bottom of the hill, Lestrade’s people were chattering, oblivious to the drama going on above them, where the knoll crested.  Lestrade’s charges. The people for whom he’d die.

Lestrade could see them all, like a constellation in the sky, tied together with invisible, powerful bonds. Mycroft to Sherlock, Sherlock to John and Mary. Molly and Mrs. Hudson loosely affiliated, but adored in their own way. Together they made a pattern of unbreakable affections: needs and desires, hopes and fear, loyalties that would not give way. Each was in some sense invaluable to others.

It was Lestrade’s job to see patterns like that. He was good at it—in all his roles and functions. Maybe not the intuitive genius Sherlock was about crime and violence, or the sudden and unexpected telling detail. But, then, Sherlock couldn’t read the constellations of the heart worth jack—and knowing Sherllock was a consolation for all the ways Sherlock excelled otherwise.

Lestrade also knew he had no vital place in that constellation. He was, at best, a place holder—as he’d held open a place in Sherlock’s life that John Watson had later filled more completely. He was everyone’s also-ran.

He told himself that was a good thing. The secret services liked their people poorly knit into reality—always a bit adrift. Orphans and loners; mavericks and ghosts. Always a little insubstantial in their ties. It made an agent adaptable, easy to move, easy to slip in and out of cover, easy to assign a new identity. Easy to spend, down to the last drop of blood.

After all, someone had to be expendable.

“Caring is not an advantage,” Sherlock had told him, once. “Mycroft assures me it’s true.”

“Puts you at a disadvantage, that’s for sure,” Lestrade had agreed. “But—I can’t say I notice him living up to it very well.”

Sherlock had ignored him…but Lestrade wasn’t fooled. Sherlock got his brother disastrously wrong in a million ways, but on a fundamental, foundational level, he knew he was Mycroft’s hostage to fortune: his brother’s beloved brother. Similarly Lestrade knew that John, and eventually Mary, were Sherlock’s open flank…and that he’d take the risk of loving them regardless of the cost.

And they? They were his exposed flank. His Achilles’ heel. All that little gaggle of interlocked radiance.

It was a relief to know he came second in their hearts. He could spend himself for them, knowing he would rob them of nothing irreplaceable.

“You can’t have them,” he said.

The banty madman’s eyes narrowed. “You’re just one more body.”

He was the body whose death would alert the rest below. A shot, or even his fall—someone would notice. Then—once alerted that mob would become the death of the madman. Lestrade smiled. He drew in his breath, then shouted “Oi!” letting the sound bell up from his diaphragm, loud in the open air. “Oi! Put it down, you berk!”

The madman scowled, knowing that below the group would have woken, gone on alert, Mycroft and Sherlock and John and Mary all now ready for battle, the others dodging for cover… “All you’ve done is slow me down.”

“it’s enough.”

“It’s your death.”

Lestrade was willing to spend himself—but not so willing he didn’t intend to resist. As the madman targeted him he lunged sideways into a planting of forsythia. The bullet missed. A second hit—but not anywhere vital…he thought. Leg. Hip, really. He scrambled deep into the green shrubs, glad it was past spring and the leaves provided proper cover.

It hurt. Badly.

“Too bad you missed,” he shouted, buying Mycroft and Sherlock and John and Mary more time.

“Too bad I don’t care,” the man said, stalking to the crest of the hill and looking down. He swore.

“Gone already?” Lestrade called, cheerfully. “Have to be quick to keep ahead of them.”

The man swore again, and turned. “Shut up.”

“Having a bad day?” Lestrade called out. He was trying to turn, to find his injury and assess it, but it was out of reach, and he was too weak all of a sudden. It hurt. He had all he could do to keep talking to the madman. Anything to keep his attention. Lestrade’s people would escape. In time they’d catch the little bastard. In the meantime…

He’d managed to think it through. It hurt, and his head was swimmy, and he was getting weak far too quickly. The bullet must have clipped an artery, or at least one of the bigger veins. He was going into shock and bleeding out.

The man with the automatic was wading into the shrubs, now. He’d lost his shot at Mycroft’s party, and had nothing left to do but go after the man who’d ruined his chance. Lestrade frowned, trying to think through the logic. What to do? Draw attention to himself? Hide? Try to flee?

He was too weak to flee. He hurt, and there were bright blind spots flashing in his vision. He curled on the ground, tried to hold back a moan, then gave up. He was dead anyway, and this kept the man with the automatic occupied for another minute or so.

“You haven’t saved them,” the nutter shouted, as he thrashed through the bushes looking for Lestrade. “I’ll get them anyway.”

“But not today,” Lestrade croaked back. “That’s good enough for me.”

“Worth your life?”

“That’s what it was for,” Lestrade croaked. “Theirs to spend.”

“They wouldn’t do the same for you, you know.”

“They would.”

“Not first. Not if the others needed them more.”

Someone had to be the expendable one, Lestrade though as he panted out his pain. He watched the little, dry leaves of past seasons stir in the wake of his fast breath, studied the gleam of the pillbugs revealed as the leaves moved and fluttered into new positions.

“Why spend yourself on them?” the man called. “Because you love them? Because you value them? Caring is not an advantage.”

“I know,” Lestrade gasped. “It’s a certainty.” A certainty that would kill him….but save them.

He heard the man fire…but didn’t much care any more. He heard the swearing…but couldn’t track it.

“You idiot,” Sherlock said, over him. “What did you think you were doing?”

“Buying time…” Lestrade didn’t expect to live, at this point. He wasn’t even sure it was Sherlock he was talking to, not a hallucination.

“With your life?”

That was Mycroft’s voice, unexpectedly angry.

“Saved you…” Lestrade closed his eyes.

“Should have saved yourself.”

Was that both brothers? Or John? Must be John—he was muttering over Lestrade and doing painful things. Good old Doctor Watson, sure to push hard on what already hurt beyond bearing.  “Saved you. That was enough…”

“The hell it was…”

“It’s all right,” Lestrade gasped. It was dark, now, with flashes of lightening but no vision. “It was enough. It’s all right…. Expendable, yeah? I wasn’t anyone’s.” And then everything was gone, leaving nothing but a faint sense of accomplishment and loss, nor did he know how hard they continued to fight.

“You’re ours, you stupid muggins,” Mycroft said, sitting at Lestrade’s head, holding his hand—and prayed that the work John was doing would be enough, that the ambulance would come in time, that the transfusions would be ready, that Lestrade would live. “You’re ours.”


End file.
